


Unlucky Thirteen

by renaissance



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Birthday, Ensemble Cast, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4577727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a quiet Monday afternoon, the best laid plans double in size and take on a life of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlucky Thirteen

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so this is a little bit late, but I really needed to give the world the Aone+Ushijima birthday fic it deserves. Happy belated August 13th!
> 
> (This is conceptually a sequel to Saturday Night Sendai, but chronologically it's actually a prequel. I realise SNS may now seem weird and full of plot-holes in comparison, but I'm explaining that away by saying it wasn't from a Datekou POV. Okay? Cool. Also I did the thing again and the 13th of August in 2012 was actually a Monday... !)

“Don’t look now,” Futakuchi whispers.

Aone can’t help it—he looks. Futakuchi swats at his arm, drawing his attention back. “I told you not to look!”

“Sorry,” Aone says.

“What are we meant to be not looking at?” Onagawa asks, leaning over Aone. Aone recognises this as a bad move—Futakuchi won’t miss a chance to antagonise Onagawa.

“If you could keep your head down and not make so much noise, I’d tell you,” Futakuchi says. “However, since that seems to be impossible for a cretin like you—”

“What the fuck?” Kamasaki says loudly. “Is that—”

Aone barely has time to blink before Futakuchi goes flying across the seats, draping himself over Aone and Onagawa and clamping a hand over Kamasaki’s mouth. “Shut—”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Nametsu asks from the other side of the carriage.

“— _up_!”

Futakuchi’s legs start flailing a bit, so Aone helpfully brings his arm on top of them to hold Futakuchi down. Still, if he doesn’t want to be noticed, he’s doing a pretty bad job of it.

“Hey, no offence,” Onagawa says, “but could you get off my crotch?”

“Just,” Futakuchi begins, his voice strangled, “let me wait… for Kamasaki-san to stop flailing…”

“Mmfh,” says Kamasaki, trying his best to knee Futakuchi in the chin.

“It’s best not to ask,” Moniwa tells Nametsu. She’s new to the team, and this is her first Datekou Birthday Outing. Initially, she’d seemed hesitant, but she’d told Aone that she wanted to be there to help him celebrate. Now, Aone regrets letting her do that.

He sits up a little higher in his seat and glances sideways down the carriage—at first look, Futakuchi appears to have been talking about another large group of teenage boys, in their school uniforms and chatting just as loudly as Aone’s teammates had been. Then, Aone recognises the Shiratorizawa uniform. Then, he recognises Ushijima Wakatoshi—and the rest of his volleyball team.

Summer holidays and Inter High have been and gone since the March Preliminaries, but the blood spilt is still fresh on the ground, and Datekou wouldn’t be a real fortress if its grounds didn’t hold grudges.

The last thing any of them need is a run-in with Shiratorizawa.

“Get _off_ me,” Kamasaki manages, wrenching his face free from Futakuchi’s palm. “I’m gonna go over there and—”

“Kamachi,” Moniwa scolds, “no-one is going to fight anyone tonight. This is about _Aone_ , and celebrating his birthday.”

Futakuchi is officially their captain now, but Moniwa’s word is law, so that seems to be the end of that. But as the train gets closer to their destination, it becomes increasingly clear that the Shiratorizawa team are headed to the same stop.

“When we get off,” Sasaya says, “no-one say anything. Just keep walking and hope that they don’t follow.”

“What’ll happen if they see us?” Koganegawa asks.

“We run away,” Onagawa says, “and never come back.”

“You think you’re so clever,” Futakuchi mumbles, scowling. “I’m seeing this through to the end.”

Obara and Onagawa share a look. “He’s so serious now,” Obara stage-whispers.

Futakuchi turns to Aone for reassurance. “You’ll stay and fight too, right?”

Aone nods, and Futakuchi looks relieved. But everyone is on edge as the train comes to a stop, and the lot of them file off slowly. From the next door down, Shiratorizawa gets off too.

“Don’t make eye contact,” Kamasaki says. “I’ll go ahead and go through the ticket gate, and hopefully they’ll go in the other directi—”

They don’t go in the other direction. The two groups converge, and Kamasaki reaches the gate at the exact same time as someone Aone recognises as one of Shiratorizawa’s middle blockers.

“Oooh, excuse me!” the blocker sings, “I didn’t see you there!”

“I was here first,” Kamasaki says, “so back off.”

Futakuchi, still uncertain in the way he wears responsibility, has his jaw clenched, looking like he wants to be fighting Kamasaki himself.

“Tendou-san,” one of the blocker’s teammates begins, but then closes his mouth into a line, apparently thinking the better of whatever he was going to say.

“Just let it go, Satori,” another one says. ”Don’t get in a fight with a stranger.”

“They’re not strangers, though,”—and it’s a second before Aone realises that it’s Ushijima speaking. Aone was the only one on his team who’d been able to block Ushijima, but it still hadn’t been enough. Aone isn’t easily scared—in fact, he’s the sort of person who scares other people, and maybe enjoys that a bit too much sometimes—but Ushijima intimidates him, just a bit. He’s a powerful, unstoppable force when he’s in his volleyball uniform, but here he is in his school uniform, looking—well, looking a bit confused.

“Are they not?” the blocker named Tendou asks, in a tone that's intimately familiar to Aone from Futakuchi’s regular pre-match taunts. “I could swear I’ve never seen any of these people before in my life.”

“We played Datekougyou in the last March preliminaries,” Ushijima says, factual, like he’s explaining it to a child. “Have you forgotten?”

Tendou’s face doesn’t fall as he sighs. “I was just messing with them, Wakatoshi-kun,” he says.

Aone finds it interesting to hear someone so intimidating referred to so familiarly. He’s struck  by the thought that Ushijima probably gets confessed to all the time by girls who call him “Wakatoshi-kun.” He’s probably used to it.

“Um,” Moniwa says, taking over as captain while Futakuchi’s tongue-tied, “perhaps we ought to go through the gates before we start blocking the way.”

“Good idea,” says the one who’d tried to stop Tendou from starting a fight.

In two distinct groups, they go through the gates, and Aone and his teammates clump together on the other side.

“Which way is it?” Koganegawa asks, bouncing on his heels.

“Just a second,” Sakunami says, consulting the map on his phone. “I think it’s,—” he pauses, frowning,—“in the exact direction _they’re_ going.”

Aone narrows his eyes at the exit that Shiratorizawa leave through. He has a _very_ bad feeling about this.

“I’m not following them,” Sasaya states. “I’m going home.”

“Oh yeah?” Kamasaki says. “What happened to ‘I’m going to beat all of you at this,’ huh?”

Sasaya narrows his eyes at Kamasaki. He doesn’t get too competitive off court, but it looks like in this case his switch has been flicked.

“Anyway,” Futakuchi says, “don’t you want to beat _Shiratorizawa_?”

The unspoken undercurrent, of course, is that they’ve been planning Aone’s birthday outing for weeks, and Futakuchi made sure he was at the head of those plans. Obviously, he doesn’t want it to all be for nothing. Aone doesn’t really think much about birthdays—he’s happy enough to celebrate and spend time with his friends, but he gets a bit uncomfortable when people start to make a big deal of him, cheering and putting party hats on his biceps and forcing him to ingest more cake than he’d usually eat in a year.

“We’re going,” Moniwa says, making an executive decision.

So, they go.

As Sakunami reads the directions off his phone, it becomes increasingly clear that they’re going in the same direction as Shiratorizawa. Everyone is grumpy, and Aone thinks it might actually have been better if they’d just gone home. He doesn’t need people being sad on his birthday.

They come to a stop at a traffic light—but Shiratorizawa were there first.

“My goodness!” Tendou says loudly. “I could swear we’re being followed.”

“I want to kick him,” Kamasaki says under his breath.

Shiratorizawa’s setter—the one with the bad fringe—turns around and gives them his best glare. Aone thinks it’s nice that he’s at least trying to be intimidating. “Please don’t tell me,” he says, “that you’re all going to putt-putt too.”

“I’m sorry,” Futakuchi says, “I can’t take you seriously, calling it _putt-putt_.”

The setter narrows his eyes. “Why, what do _you_ call it?”

“Minigolf,” Obara says. “Everyone calls it minigolf.”

“It’s definitely putt-putt,” someone else on Shiratorizawa says.

“Anyway,” the setter says loudly, “why are you here on a school day?”

“Why are _you_ here on a school day?” Futakuchi counters. “Don’t you have horses to milk, or something?”

“That’s not—” the setter says, “we don’t—”

The traffic light changes, and the two groups start to blend together as they cross the street, Futakuchi pushing ahead to keep up with his new target.

“I’m so sorry,” Moniwa says to no-one in particular.

“Don’t worry about it,” says one of the Shiratorizawa members, who Aone thinks might be one of their reserve setters. “I don’t know about you guys, but every team outing for us turns into the underclassmen being pains in the arse.”

Moniwa laughs, much more at ease talking to someone who doesn’t seem to want to get into a fight. “That’s right. I don’t think your upperclassmen are much better, though.”

The setter laughs, and Aone doesn’t miss the way Moniwa’s eyes flick to Tendou, who’s walking side-by-side with Ushijima. “Well, that’s true,” the setter says, “except for me. I’m the very pinnacle of good behaviour. Hey, I’m Semi, by the way—what’s your name?”

As Moniwa makes a new friend, Aone turns back to Obara and Onagawa, who’re walking a few paces behind everyone.

“I don’t like them,” Onagawa mutters. “They’re too laid back. Monsters like that shouldn’t be so relaxed.”

“They probably save it all for on court,” Obara says. “That, or it’s all an act.”

Onagawa shrugs. “I guess the tiny one arguing with Futakuchi has a lot of pent up anger. Although he seems to be letting it all out now.”

Aone turns to look forward. Futakuchi looks like he’s having a great time. Good on him.

“He can save that for his _putt-putt_ ,” Obara says, smirking a bit. Obara doesn’t get like this often, but Shiratorizawa brings out the worst in everyone

Up ahead, Futakuchi’s tiny adversary is nearing the end of his tether. “You still won’t tell me what _you’re_ doing here!”

“I don’t see why I should say it first,” Futakuchi says. “You left the train station first—that’s how these things work, right?”

“That is the most _small-minded_ and _petty_ reasoning I have _ever_ heard—”

Aone turns his attention to another conversation. “Jeez, Shirabu is never usually like this,” Semi says.

“I’m afraid that might be Futakuchi’s fault,” Moniwa says apologetically.

Aone gets the impression that Moniwa and Semi have already shared in full the details of their respective teams’ outings, because a second later they move on—or back—to talking about their cake preferences, so they’ve probably already moved on from the basics.

“Well,” Onagawa says, his tone lightening, “happy birthday, Aone.”

At that, one of the Shiratorizawa members jumps. “It’s your _birthday_?”

Aone is taken aback, and he instinctively steps away, treading on Onagawa’s toes by mistake.

“Most people have birthdays, Goshiki,” someone in Shiratorizawa says—Aone thinks he’s their libero.

Goshiki must be the excitable one, and Aone briefly wonders why all of them have such bad haircuts, such weird, severe fringes. “But it’s Ushijima-san’s birthday too!”

“A _birthday_ ,” Futakuchi’s enemy Shirabu says. “How _hard_ would it have been for you to say that?”

“You could have said it first,” Futakuchi points out cheerfully. Aone knows him well enough to know that this is his idea of _real_ fun, and that he’ll almost certainly remember this better than the minigolf.

And then what Goshiki said starts to sink in for Aone. It’s Ushijima’s birthday too, which means they’re probably going to have to hold conversation—something simple like acknowledging that they’re each a year older than they were this time last year, and giving each other their best wishes. Aone doesn’t like small talk, mainly because he doesn’t like talking much. The thought makes him wish they’d run away back at the station.

“That must come as a surprise,” Tendou says. “Wakatoshi-kun, did you know that more than one person is born on every day? Tsutomu didn’t.”

“I think they only teach that in second year,” someone jokes.

Koganegawa picks up on this, emerging from his relatively contemplative silence and rounding on Goshiki. “You’re a first year too? What position do you play? Are you a starter? I’m a starter now that the third years have left—”

“Oh no,” Obara says, “now we’ve lost him forever.”

“I think it’s sweet that he’s making friends,” Nametsu says. “I’d try talking to someone, if they had a manager…”

“We don’t need friends on another team,” Onagawa says, in a way that is probably meant to be comforting. “I have enough trouble getting on with half of our lot off the court.”

Aone doesn’t miss how a few of the team—Sakunami in particular, but Obara and Onagawa too—stick a bit closer to Nametsu after that. He tries to gravitate towards her too, but it’s not long before Futakuchi comes to pull him away.

“Hey, Aone, you need to meet my new friends,” Futakuchi says.

“I’m _not_ your friend,” Shirabu says.

“I’m considering it,” says the other Shiratorizawa member that Futakuchi drags Aone towards. There’s a slightly telling look on his face that, quietly, he might be having just as much fun as Futakuchi.

Futakuchi nods like this is the only acceptable answer. “This is Shirabu, and this is Kawanishi. My new best friends.”

Shirabu looks so mortified that he could scream. Aone keeps his face impassive as he bows in greeting. They’ve reached the minigolf centre by now, anyway, so it’s not long before Shirabu and Kawanishi are drawn away with the rest of their team. Aone is sort of relieved—Shiratorizawa, for now, are way too far out of his comfort zone.

The thought passes as soon as they sign up into teams and get their clubs, balls, and scorecards. Most of them have never done this before, but it’s reassuring when Onagawa writes his name down as “arse,” just like at the arcade, and Futakuchi (who’s down as “ACE☆”) spends a good five minutes trying to convince him to write “Pantalons” instead.

And being around this familiar crowd—well, that’s how Aone had planned to spend the day. After minigolf, they’re going to head back to Sendai for dinner, even though it’s a Monday night and they’ve got school in the morning. The team comes first.

“Let’s take the expert course,” Sasaya says.

“No thank you,” Sakunami says. “You’re only saying that because you’ve played this before.”

Sasaya shrugs—it had been his idea, but in his defence, the whole team had agreed to it. And Aone had to agree to it, or Futakuchi had threatened to exercise his veto power as captain and send them all to purikura instead. That was enough for Aone to agree.

“It’s Aone’s birthday,” Kamasaki says. “Let him choose.”

Aone gives Sakunami an apologetic look. “Expert.”

Just like at the train station, the Shiratorizawa group reach the entrance to the expert course at the same time as Datekou do—Sasaya’s in front, asserting his dominance as the Alpha Golfer, and he comes face-to-face with a significantly taller Apha Golfer.

To Aone’s surprise, Shiratorizawa’s pack leader in this is much more obliging than the others had been earlier. “You go first,” he says.

“No, you go,” Sasaya says, “I insist.”

“No mind-games here,” he says. “Oh—I’m Oohira Reon. And you?”

Sasaya narrows his eyes. “Sasaya Takehito,” he says.

“Oh my god,” Kamasaki whispers, “Sasaya’s going to get wrecked.”

“You sound so excited,” Moniwa says.

Kamasaki shrugs. “If we can’t beat Shiratorizawa on court,” he says, a bit louder, “what chance do we have on the green?”

“This isn’t the _real_ green,” Futakuchi snaps. “It’s just minigolf. And if we lose to them, I’m never speaking to any of you doubting third years again.”

“Which one of you is the captain?” Tendou asks, butting in and looming over Futakuchi, just a bit.

Futakuchi gives him a _look_. “I am.”

“Then you should know that our strength in volleyball _does_ in fact carry over to our strength in putt-putt,” Tendou says.

“That’s not true,” Ushijima says. “Most of us have never played before. For now, there’s no way of telling which team has more skilled players.”

“That’s right!” Moniwa says quickly. “So let’s not turn this into a competi—”

“You talk big,” Futakuchi says to Tendou. “But you’re going _down_.”

“A shrimp like you?”

“By a few _centimetres_ —”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Ushijima frowns at no-one in particular. “Height has nothing to do with putt-putt.”

At the back of the crowd, Goshiki turns to Koganegawa. “I’ve never seen anyone as tall as you. Are you good at putt-putt?”

“I’m the _best_ ,” Koganegawa says, putting a hand to his chest.

“That’s just boasting,” Fukiage says. “You can barely get a juicebox into a garbage bin from two metres away.”

“It’d be faster to walk,” Sakunami adds.

Their teasing doesn’t make Goshiki any less wide-eyed. “Let’s make it a competition, then!” he says. “First to a hundred points wins!”

“That’s not how golf points work—” Sakunami begins, but he’s drowned out by Koganegawa’s enthusiastic agreement, and the beginnings of a new scoring system, as drafted by him and Goshiki.

Because there are so many of them, it’s a slow start as they trickle onto the expert course. Aone stays behind as Sasaya and Oohira set the pace, and Futakuchi and Tendou follow, at each other’s throats. The first hole is simple, just guiding the ball through a passage underneath a toy house mounted in the middle of the green felt path. Sasaya and Oohira are done in seconds, a hole in one each, and by the time Aone reaches the first hole they’re already on the fourth.

“Show them what you’re made of, Aone!” Futakuchi calls from the second hole.

Aone is tall enough that the house doesn’t block his view, but it still takes him two shots to get the ball in the hole. It’s harder than it looks. Although, he’s not mingling enough that he’s in competition with anyone from Shiratorizawa, so it doesn’t really matter.

Up ahead, Tendou hits a hole in one on the third hole. “Take _that_ , Ke—”

Futakuchi’s grip on his club tightens. “If you call me by my first name one more time, I’m going to—”

“You wouldn’t hurt little old me, would you?” Tendou asks sweetly.

Futakuchi looks despairingly to Kamasaki, whose sleeves are already rolled up, spoiling for a fight since he woke up that morning. Kamasaki looks back as if to say, “You got yourself into this mess.” Futakuchi is saved, though, by his new friend Kawanishi, peering over Tendou’s shoulder.

“Have you just not been writing down your bad scores?” Kawanishi asks.

Kawanishi’s answer is an elbow to the gut, but Futakuchi reaches behind Tendou and lowfives him.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Tendou asks.

While they fight, Aone moves onto the second hole. He’s going roughly at a pace with Obara and Onagawa, and they’re at the same skill level, which is comforting. Behind them, the first years (and Nametsu) are struggling. None of them (except Nametsu) are any good at it, but Koganegawa and Goshiki are quite content to take the number of hits as the number of points they get.

By the sixth hole, Aone’s line on the scorecard is looking much better. Up ahead, Sasaya and Oohira, along with a few other people from Shiratorizawa, are at the twelfth hole, looking like a calm and collected group of middle-aged men, and in contrast to everything happening behind them.

Kamasaki looks like he’s going a bit mad, because he keeps hitting the ball too hard—on the seventh hole, he’d even launched it over the fence and into the intermediate course. And fortunately for Futakuchi, Tendou’s taken to teasing Kamasaki over his aggressive play style—“I’m sure that works when you’re _blocking_ ; do I have to remind you again that this isn’t volleyball?”—and Kamasaki’s loud retorts are getting more and more florid, with language so obscene that Sakunami has taken to climbing onto the obstacles to cover Koganegawa’s ears.

While Kawanishi and Shirabu are at the ninth hole, Futakuchi ducks back to where Aone is. “Hey,” he says, “sorry for kinda ditching you. I’ll give you extra attention at dinner, I promise.”

“It’s alright,” Aone says. Actually, he’s sort of pleased that Futakuchi’s making friends, even if one of those friends still looks like he wants to launch Futakuchi into the pond by the fifteenth hole.

“Yeah, but,” Futakuchi says, “it’s your birthday. We should be focusing on you.”

“It’s Ushijima’s birthday too,” Aone says, gesturing towards the walkway between the seventh and eighth holes. “No-one’s paying attention to him.”

Actually, Ushijima is standing around awkwardly while Moniwa and Semi take the lead, laughing like they’re old friends. Every now and then, Semi tries to engage him in conversation, but it looks like a losing battle.

“Do you feel sorry for him?” Futakuchi asks.

“A little bit,” Aone says. “Do you think he gets lonely?”

Futakuchi scoffs. “Have you tried talking to him? You could put up an umbrella on a sunny day and he’d ask when it’s meant to rain.”

“I haven’t tried,” Aone says.

“Good,” Futakuchi says. “Don’t. Leave him to squirm. You should have seen Moniwa-san trying to be nice to him. I wanted to tear my hair out.”

Aone shudders.

“Anyway,” Futakuchi says, “I’ve gotta get back. Kawanishi and I are teaming up to ruin Shirabu’s life. At least, I think that’s the understanding we have. He may just be this sneaky all the time.”

Aone gestures that it’s fine for him to go—Obara’s just about finished on the sixth hole, and they’re going to move on to number seven. Behind him, Goshiki is beating Koganegawa by two points, and Sakunami and Nametsu have ditched the course entirely to get ice cream. Ahead, Semi gets the eighth hole in two goes, and hands the ball to Moniwa.

While Onagawa struggles with the sharp corners of the seventh hole, Aone watches as Moniwa positions himself to hit. It’s an uphill shot that involves hitting the ball through a hole in a huge fibreglass apple, and along the path of a worm-shaped, golf ball-sized slide on the other side.

“I’m not sure I can make this one at all,” Moniwa admits. “I took six goes to get the last one. This game is too hard for me.”

“It just looks hard because there’s that big—whatever that is, in the way,” Semi says.

“That’s a fruit,” Ushijima says helpfully. They both ignore him.

“You can do it,” Semi says. He seems too genuine and encouraging for someone from Shiratorizawa. Aone wonders if that’s why he’s not a starter.

“Are you worried because you’re short?” Ushijima asks. “I don’t _think_ there’s any correlation.”

“ _Wakatoshi_ ,” Semi hisses, elbowing him, “that’s impolite!”

Moniwa laughs it off. “It’s fine,” he says. “Semi’s not much taller than me, and he’s doing much better than I am.”

“Oi, Aone,” Onagawa says, drawing his attention back. “Your turn.”

“Right,” Aone says.

When Aone looks back, after the three shots it takes him to get the ball in, Moniwa’s hit a hole in one.

“I can’t believe it,” Obara says as Aone passes him the ball, “Moniwa must be some sort of human magnet. Even Shiratorizawa loves him.”

Aone watches as Semi slaps Moniwa on the back, and Moniwa stumbles and nearly trips over the small slide.

“Is this really surprising, though?” Onagawa says. “Of all of us, Moniwa’s the least likely to get whacked in the head with a golf club by the end of this afternoon.”

In fact, the first incident of golf club-related violence doesn’t occur until Aone’s on the thirteenth hole. They’ve caught up to Moniwa, Semi, and Ushijima, and are waiting while Semi makes the shot. By now, Sasaya’s group of Shiratorizawa admirers have finished entirely, and have joined Sakunami and Nametsu out of the sun. At the sixteenth hole, Futakuchi and Kawanishi are duly ruining Shirabu’s life.

And at the eighteenth hole, Kamasaki and Tendou are at each other’s throats.

The eighteenth hole is extravagant, which Aone thinks is rather fitting for the expert course: it’s entirely uphill, with a tiny river running down the middle, three different gutters that the ball can fall down and come back to the bottom, and a windmill above the hole, its fan blades rotating and periodically covering it. And Tendou is perched on the windmill, brandishing his golf club as a blade, while Kamasaki, one foot in the water, wields his own club, ready to parry.

“Oh _no_ ,” Moniwa says. “This is exactly what I _didn’t_ want to happen.”

He’s off in a second, scorecard abandoned, and Semi drops his club and follows, bodily dragging Tendou off the windmill. Aone just sighs.

“Is your whole team like this?”

Aone looks up— _Ushijima_ , of all people, is directly addressing him.

“What do you mean?” Aone asks.

Ushijima narrows his eyes. “Do you start fights wherever you go?”

“Do you?” Aone counters. Being up close to Ushijima is much more comforting than being on the other side of the net to him. He’s at least a centimetre shorter than Aone, which makes him _short_ —and Aone’s fine with short people.

Ushijima doesn’t respond for a few moments. “Well,” he says, “being around your team has brought out the worst in them.”

“Being around your team has brought out the worst in us,” Aone says. He wants to add, “Let’s agree to never do this again,” but he doesn’t, because he gets the feeling they won’t.

“We should stick to volleyball,” Ushijima says. “This is childish. There’s no point to the oversized fruit and the undersized bodies of water.”

Aone fundamentally disagrees with that last point, but he thinks sticking to volleyball isn’t such a bad idea.

From the eighteenth hole, Aone hears Kamasaki shout, “I’m going to shove this golf club up your—”, hears the sound of two clubs connecting, watches a golf ball fly right past his eyes even though he’s not looking that way.

Ushijima has an unreadable look on his face. “You’re a good blocker,” he says, taking Aone off-guard with the change of topic. “Where did you learn to block?”

“Middle school,” Aone says warily.

“Hmm,” Ushijima says, his mouth turning down into a frown. “You could be better. You should’ve come to—”

“AONE!” Moniwa yells. “Help me pull them apart!”

The last thing Aone wants is to get kicked off the golf course for starting a fight, so he walks briskly to the eighteenth hole—that, and he doesn’t want to know what the end of Ushijima’s sentence was going to be, although he has his suspicions.

It doesn’t take long to restrain and calm down Kamasaki, and after that Tendou seems to calm himself down, acting like nothing happened at all. Sasaya drags Kamasaki off the course and forces him to have an ice cream, since “he needs to chill.”

And after that, it’s almost normal. Aone slowly makes his way to the eighteenth hole, behind Shirabu’s loud declaration that he gives up, and doesn’t know why he even bothers trying to be nice, and Futakuchi’s dismay when Kawanishi follows him, and Moniwa’s three more holes in one, and Ushijima’s stilted conversation.

Once Aone, Obara and Onagawa are finished, Koganegawa and Goshiki finally make it to the end, and Koganegawa’s winning by a good ten points, based off their heavily modified scoring system.

“I’m so _jealous_ ,” Goshiki says. “I can’t believe you won!”

“I can’t believe being taller makes you better at putt-putt,” Shiratorizawa’s libero says quietly.

“It’s _minigolf_ ,” Sasaya says.

Nomenclature aside, Aone feels sort of at peace with how the afternoon turned out. It wasn’t what he was expecting, but when is it ever, when he’s with his teammates? He can’t see it happening again—especially since Kamasaki and Tendou have to be kept at least fifteen paces apart at all times—but it’s nice to have some things in your life that only happen once, that you can look back on and laugh at as a strange memory.

As they walk en masse back to the train station, Futakuchi rejoins Aone. “So much for my new best friends. Kawanishi totally sold me out.”

“What did you expect?” Aone asks.

“A little decency!” Futakuchi says. “It’s good to know, though, that Shiratorizawa are bad sports off course and on.”

“Hey,” Shirabu says, bounding up beside Futakuchi, “we’re not bad sports on court. We all play like professionals.”

“Do you need me to say it again?” Futakuchi asks, grinning.

As Shirabu and Futakuchi go at it again, Aone walks a bit faster to join up with Nametsu and Obara.

When they get back to the train station, there’s no pushing and shoving, and they sit all mixed up on the train. Moniwa and Semi are swapping numbers, Sasaya and Oohira haven’t stopped talking since they found out they both like golf, Koganegawa and Goshiki have chosen some phone game as their new arena of contest, and Futakuchi and Shirabu are still arguing. And somehow, now it just feels natural.

Aone catches Ushijima’s eye from across the carriage and looks away quickly. Intermingling isn’t for everyone.

When the train gets to Sendai, and instead of splitting off, they all start to head in the same direction. Aone has the same bad feeling that he had earlier just before they found out that Shiratorizawa were going to minigolf too. They make no effort to split apart.

Futakuchi is at Aone’s side in a second. “Okay, this time I really _am_ ditching those two,” he says. “We’re enemies again.”

Aone nods. “They could be worse, though.”

“Sure,” Futakuchi says. He glances ahead. “But if we end up in the same restaurant as them, I’m going to scream.”

**Author's Note:**

> There are two words for minigolf in Japanese: ミニゴルフ (minigorufu) and パターゴルフ (patāgorufu). [[x](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/miniature_golf#Translations)]
> 
> Please leave a comment! I'm always here for chatting about headcanon, especially relating to Datekou and Shiratorizawa.


End file.
